 Do you want to grow your network on LinkedIn? So having a large number of connections on LinkedIn is really important, helps you increase the opportunity of developing leads, acquiring quality suppliers for your business, or perhaps improving your career. I'm Jonathan Pollinger, social media trainer, and I'm going to take you through five tips of how to improve your network on LinkedIn. Let's get into it. So the first way I'm going to show you on how you can improve your networking on LinkedIn is via the recommendations feature. So this can help you in a couple of ways. First of all, if you've got recommendations displayed on your profile, this makes you more attractive to those people looking to network with you because it shows that you're authentic, it shows you that you're an expert in your field, and therefore they're more likely to reach out and connect with you. Similarly, if you've sent an invitation out to connect with somebody, they can refer back to your profile and check out your recommendations. Also though, it's a good opportunity to actually network and develop your relationship with your existing connections because this feature only works for your first connections. So a couple of benefits. So let's see how we actually do this in practice. So the first way is to use the recommendations panel, which you can see on my profile here. Just scroll to the top so you can see that's my profile. And then we scroll to the bottom to the recommendations section or panel here where they are displayed, as you can see. And then we click the plus symbol and we've got a couple of options here. We can either ask for a recommendation or give a recommendation. So first of all, let's ask for a recommendation. I'm going to put in Karim's name here, just going to select him there, click on continue. Then I'm going to define our relationships. I'm asking for a recommendation. So I'm going to put down that Karim was a client of mine, put down my social media training role. And then normally I would personalize the message, for example, referencing the work that I've done with Karim. But in this case, to save time, I'm just going to leave that. And then once that's done, I would click send. He would get a message via LinkedIn messaging, would write the recommendation. I would approve that. And then that would be displayed here in this area. Also we can give a recommendation. So this is really the flip side of asking for a recommendation. So once again, I'm going to put in Karim's name there, click on continue, define our relationship. So this time I'm giving Karim a recommendation. So I'm going to say I was a client of Karim going to select his position. So going to put down co founder of boost social agency there, I would write my recommendation there in some detail. I have to be massively long, but maybe a couple of paragraphs there, and then click send. And as I mentioned before, he'd get that via LinkedIn messaging, Karim can approve, and then it will be displayed on his profile. So that is basically it. But before I go, I just want to show you another way of doing this is exactly the same process, but you might prefer this. So what you can actually do is find the person that either you want to ask for a recommendation from or give a recommendation and go through the process that way. So I'm just going to go to Karim's profile here. Then I'm going to click on more, and you'll see that the options are in the middle here. So we've got request a recommendation and recommend and just to click this to show you that it's exactly the same process as before. And it's just an alternative way of asking and indeed requesting a recommendation. So that's how to improve your networking on LinkedIn using recommendations. So the second method I'm going to show you on how to improve your networking on LinkedIn is by using the open to work feature. So at first view, this might seem that this is a feature designed for people who are looking for a new job, but it can actually show people that you are also open to networking. And there's a nice bonus in that you get extra visibility on your profile to the wider network on LinkedIn. So let's see how you do that. So first of all, you can do it by the open to button here. So if we click on that button and then select finding a new job, we get a panel that pops up here. And I can put in one or more job titles here. So I'm just going to put in social media marketing specialist could add additional titles there if I wanted to, then whether you wish to work on site in the office, hybrid working or remote going to leave that as a list, then you can put in one or more locations, whether you want to start work immediately or whether you're looking for work on a sort of ad hoc basis. I'm going to go for that. Similarly, I'm going to check the contract and temporary buttons here and uncheck the full time option. And then the key here is to select all LinkedIn members. So this means it's not just recruiters that this extra visibility is going to go to, but it's going to go across LinkedIn. And then we're going to save that. And I will show you a couple of things that will happen. So first of all, you get the open to work flash or badge here that you can see on my profile picture. And secondly, you get a panel here that shows that you are open to work. But the extra visibility comes that if people are interested in these roles, LinkedIn will flag that up to them on LinkedIn. The second way of doing this, which works exactly the same way as clicking the open to button is that you can actually complete this open to work profile directly. So it's just an additional way of doing it there. So that's how you can once again improve your networking on LinkedIn. But this time by using the open to work feature. So I'm going to take you through a third way of improving your networking on LinkedIn by using the search feature or specifically the advanced search feature. Now the good news with the search feature is that it's very easily accessible because the search bar as we can see here is ever present here no matter what section you are on LinkedIn. So I happen to be on the homepage here, but we can still see the search bar there. So a good starting point with networking is to network with people that are your likely prospects people that are potential clients. So in my case, that's going to be small business people. So let's use that as an example. So just going to click within the search bar here. And then I'm going to put the phrase small business here. But what I'm going to do is actually put that in quote marks because that will ensure then that LinkedIn searches for this as a phrase. So it just makes sure that people would say just the word business on their profile without the phrase small business are excluded. So we're looking specifically for small business people. So that's why I put it in quote marks there. So then what you do is you hit the return key. And you'll see that I will get loads and loads of results of all different types of content here. So we've got posts, people, jobs, products, and more posts. But what I'm particularly interested in is people. So I can either click the button here or the option here. So let's just click on that option. And we've scrolled down to people. If I want to just got a handful of results here. So let's just check these out. So we've got small business reference there, small business Academy, small business owner, perfect kind of like client for me, small business Britain there. And if I want all results here, I can have the full list. So this is going to be quite an extensive list. In fact, you can see that there's 1.7 near enough million results here. So what I want to do is narrow this down. So I'm Cardiff based. So I'm going to now go to location. You can see that there's a number of different filters that we can use here. If I click on all filters, that'll just show you a few more there. But what I really need for now is location. So I'm going to click on location. I'm going to put in Cardiff here and just make sure the right one comes up. So we've got Cardiff Wales UK. Then I'm going to hit show results and that will now narrow it down to 973 results. So I've got local based, mainly, as you can see, small business owners here, which is absolutely ideal for the type of people that I want to network with. So that's how you use the advanced search feature to improve your networking on LinkedIn. So we're now going to look at how you can improve your networking on LinkedIn by using LinkedIn's live events. So this could be a video live event or an audio live event. Now we've seen how to use the search feature to find out people that you might be interested in networking with. So what we're going to do now is use the same search feature to find audio or live video events that you might be interested in attending. So good starting point is to put in a topic or subject you're interested in. So I'm just going to put in social media, which needed us to say is a topic I'm interested in. I'm going to put this in quote marks because it's a phrase that I want to search for here. I don't just want to search for the word social or media. Then I'm going to hit the return key and we'll get a variety of results, including a post from myself here, other types of content, search results on the left hand side. But what I'm interested in this time is events. So if I click on the events button there, you'll see that there are 891 events. So plenty of events for me to potentially attend. And if I want to see more of these, I can just click next and browse through those. But one of the events there caught my interest because I am a fan of Luann and Andy here. So let's check out their event. So just going to click on that and go to the event page. We can see details of the event here. Essentially, they're looking at trends for 2024. And at the moment you can see that my direct connections, I am directly connected to both of them, are attending along with one other person. But after I've clicked attend, you'll see that I'll be able to see everybody that is attending. So let's just do that. So I'm going to click attend, that confirms my attendance. And you can now see that there are 39 attendees in total, including the presenters. So I'm going to click on that. And now I've got a list of people who are interested in the same topic or subject as me that I can potentially connect with. I've even got a connect button here, or obviously I can visit their profile and find out more about them. So pretty useful that you can do that. So let's just go back here and point out something else that's also handy from a networking point of view. And that is this networking tab here. So if I click that, it's essentially breaking things up a little bit and showing me my direct connections, got the ability to message them there. And also it's giving me a breakdown of what industries the attendees are from, and once again, a full list of all the attendees. So pretty handy there. On top of that, if I do actually want to get involved with conversations and network with people's comments and so on, I can do that in this area here. Plenty of time to go to 25th of January. So there's probably going to be a bit of a discussion around here. And definitely there will be on the day. And after that, and of course, more people are going to be joining in all the time as well. So a really cool way to be able to network with your peers and like-minded people. So let's just do one final step to confirm my attendance so that I don't forget it. There's a handy add to calendar feature here. So I'm on Google, so I'm going to click on that there. Got details of the event that will take me back to the event page when it's live at 11 o'clock on the 25th. So I'm just going to save that into my calendar. So that's there now. Let's go back to linked in. And this is the event page once again. And there you go. That is how you can use the live events, both video and audio events, on linked in to improve your network. So the final tip I'm going to give you on improving your linked in networking is around sending an invitation to connect using linked in mobile. So we're currently looking at linked in mobile on my Android smartphone. And the potential issue here is selecting the connect button that we can see here rather than sending a message because it works in a different way from desktop. So on desktop, when you select the connect button, you have the opportunity to send a note with your invitation to connect. However, on mobile you don't. So if I was to select this button, the connection request goes off straight away instantly through to the person you wish to connect with without giving you the opportunity to send a message. So the way to get around this if you want to send a message and generally, it's a good idea to do so because you personalize your invitation is to go to the three dots here and then drop down on the menu to personalize invites. And then you'll see you get the opportunity to write in your message there. You get the same number of characters. You can see the character count is decreasing as I have typed there. And then when you're ready, you can click the connect message and off it goes. So that's how to personalize your invite when you're connecting with somebody on LinkedIn mobile. So you should be in a position now to have a good quality and large network on LinkedIn and reap all the benefits as a result of that. For more tips on LinkedIn, please like and subscribe. See you next time.